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For more than 20 years, Saeb Erekat, the Palestinian’s chief peace negotiator, has chased the dream of a two-state solution and the hope of an independent Palestinian state.

He followed it to the White House under four different US presidents, haggled over it in secret and public negotiations with hard faced Israeli negotiators, and defended it against sceptical Palestinians on the streets of Jericho.

A generation of heavyset, elderly men in suits - led by their 82-year-old president Mahmoud Abbas - had for years set the idea of a two-state solution as their north star.

They ignored calls for violence from the street and rejected plans to promote a South Africa-style international boycott against Israel. They clung to the belief that if they cooperated with the US and stayed at the negotiating table then one day the Americans would pressure Israel into allowing a Palestinian state with east Jerusalem as its capital.

And then, in a speech of just 11 minutes, Donald Trump snatched that belief from them.

“Abbas is facing something like a day reckoning. He has got nothing to show for his 25 years of negotiation,” said Diana Buttu, a Palestinian lawyer who was once Mr Abbas’s legal advisor.

Mr Abbas, popularly known as Abu Mazen, was elected president of the Palestinian Authority in 2005 after the death of Yasser Arafat. But he is a dour man who smokes heavily and has none of Arafat’s flamboyant charisma.

And while Arafat would skip back and forth between violence and peace talks - the gun and the olive branch, as he called it - Mr Abbas is firmly wed to negotiations and has ordered his forces to cooperate with Israel’s military rather than fight against them.

The lack of any real progress in negotiations during his 12 years in power has left Mr Abbas deeply unpopular. An opinion poll from September found that 67 per cent of Palestinians want him to resign.

The gulf between the leader and his people is especially wide with the young, many of whom were born after Mr Abbas helped negotiate the 1993 Oslo Accords but feel they have yet to see any benefit from them.

Nasser, a 15-year-old boy in Bethlehem sneered at the mention of Mr Abbas’ name. A few minutes earlier he had been throwing rocks at Israeli troops and running from their tear gas canisters but had paused to eat a pastry and drink a small bottle of milk. “Abu Mazen should go,” Nasser said. “He is with the [Israeli] occupation, he is not with the people.”

While Mr Abbas and his circle have said the US has disqualified itself from acting as a broker in peace talks, it is not clear they have any plan about where to go instead. Officials often say they will turn to China, Russia, or the EU as a mediator in two-state talks but, in the short term at least, nowhere except the US has the leverage to force Israelis and Palestinians to talk.

Mr Abbas (right) had said at the beginning of Mr Trump's term that he was hopeful the new US president would broker a peace dealCredit:
EPA/ATEF SAFADI

Another possibility is that the old guard may yield to an idea that is increasingly popular among young Palestinian activists: pursuing a one-state solution. Instead of a national struggle for a state of their own, Palestinians would wage a civil rights struggle demanding citizenship in Israel and full voting rights.

Mr Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, has said since the Trump speech that he now favours a one-state model. “Now is the time to transform the struggle for one-state with equal rights for everyone living in historic Palestine,” he told Haaretz.

Israel would almost certainly never agree to a one-state model as it would mean that the Jewish state no longer had a Jewish majority. And Grant Rumley, a political analyst who wrote a biography of Mr Abbas, said he was sceptical that the elderly leader would take a radical turn away from two states.

“Abu Mazen is the reason Palestinians have embraced two states. He advocated for it the longest, he staked it out and he’s defended it within his own party for decades,” Mr Rumley said. “He is not going to be able to reorient the entire national structure towards a one-state solution, that would mean breaking down all the he has built.”

A spokesman for Mr Abbas did not respond to a request for comment.

Palestinian demonstrators burn posters of the US president in BethlehemCredit:
AFP PHOTO / Musa AL SHAER

For now, Mr Abbas is likely to try to weather the storm and, despite his strong words condemning the US role, may even return to two-state talks when the White House unveils its peace proposals next year.

But analysts agreed that Mr Trump’s decision to recognise Jerusalem had shaken the Palestinian leadership and further discredited the idea of the two-state solution among the public. A recent opinion poll found that 57 per cent of Palestinians believed the idea was already impossible because of the expansion of Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.

As a result, support for a one-state solution is likely to grow, especially among the young, and the next Palestinian leader will probably be more wary of embracing peace talks brokered by the US.

“The number of people supporting the idea of one-state is growing even though there isn’t a single political party advocating for it,” said Ms Buttu. “The movement of people saying negotiations are over is also going to grow.”

Support for violent confrontation may also rise - a trend line closely watched by Israel.

Israel’s leadership has complained bitterly that Mr Abbas is not serious about peace talks and often drifts from the table at crucial moments rather than take hard decisions. But officials acknowledge that the old man, who probably has at most a few more years in power, has been committed to the idea of a two-state process rather than violence.

“The Palestinian leadership has stated thousands of time to their people that they will achieve their national goals without violence. This is another proof of the failure of their agenda,” said Alon Eviatar, a former Israeli military intelligence officer. “I’m sure that the next leadership will be tougher and will take a harder line.”